Luke 15:29 (The older brother said to his father): “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.”
A poor Burundian woman found herself in a violent marriage. Her overbearing husband would write out a long list of household chores to be done each day before he returned from work. At the end of each day, he would tick off all that she’d done, and beat her mercilessly if anything was outstanding. So she was beaten every night. To her relief, he became sick and died, and within a few years she was blessed to remarry – this time to a kind and loving husband. Gone were the lists. She simply loved serving him. Months into the new marriage, she found a crumpled piece of paper behind one of the cupboards. It was one of the old lists from her previous husband! She read through it nervously, wincing as the old memories came flooding back. But then, to her amazement, she realised that she had completed everything on the old list that very day. What she couldn’t accomplish motivated by fear of punishment, she had fulfilled out of energising love.
In Jesus’ famous parable of the lost son, which son was more lost? Ultimately the older one was, because he was exposed as being lost even when at home. He had, as John Wesley spoke of his own pre-conversion experience, “the religion of a servant, not a son”. He’d played it by the rules whilst completely missing out on the relationship. Tragic!
It may sound like a cliché, but there is nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there is nothing you can do to make him love you less. God is a God of relationship. Away with images of a hard taskmaster or a cranky old man, he is the best loving Father, beyond what you could possibly imagine. Enjoy him!
Father, I choose to follow you today, grateful that you want a relationship with me, not my obedience to a long list of rules. Amen!
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